Ben wasn't used to being in such closed quarters with women. Most of the ones on campus were either terrified of him or disgusted by him or delusionally attracted to his very-much-spoken-for brother, so he didn't have a ton of experience with the intense heat of lust.

But just because he was inexperienced doesn't mean he couldn't recognize it when he felt it. And when he finally got Rey outfitted with a dull-edged practice sword and she stood in the full light of the main practice floor, he knew he wanted her.

There was nothing sexier than a powerful woman. And Rey looked like a goddamn warrior goddess with her hands wrapped around that sword.

Before he could think about where else he wanted her hands, he readied himself in his practiced stance, and focused on the weight of his practice sword against his palms. Don't get an erection right now. Please, please, please play this cool. That proved harder than ever when he thought about how beautiful, how willing she had looked when she'd brought up kissing him.

Clearing his throat, he swung his staff in a curving arc. The cool wind it created didn't do anything to cool him off. "Have you ever used one of these before?"

"A sword? No. Believe it or not they didn't have a ton of swords in foster care."

Without his permission, his lips quirked upward. For most of their friendship or relationship or whatever you wanted to call it, she'd been one step ahead of him, always keeping him on his toes. For the first time, he almost had the upper-hand on her. Or, at least, he would have the upper-hand if he wasn't expending a tremendous amount of mental energy keeping his lust in check. "Then I'll have to go easy on you."

Rey mimicked his stance, lowering her center of gravity and squaring up her shoulders. No matter how intense her gaze, though, her lips quirked into an adorable smile. "Was that a joke? Oh, God, who are you and what have you done to Ben 'Scariest Man on Campus' Solo?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm not him when I'm fighting."

He took a step forward. She answered him with her body. It was as if they were the only two people in the world, stranded in this moment together. Ben would have sworn he could feel her heartbeat without even touching her.

"And who are you when you're fighting?"

"I don't know. A Knight. A swordsmith. A master." It all sounded so stupid to his ears, but when this was the one place in the world where he felt in control and free. It must have sounded just as stupid to Rey, because as soon as the word master passed his lips, she shuddered. "Are you afraid?"

Her chin tilted up, presenting her face to him like an open book written in a language he didn't quite understand. Her tongue dashed out and licked her lips; he didn't miss the way her chest rose and fall quicker, a sure sign that she was afraid. But of him or of the prospect of wanting to kiss him, he couldn't begin to guess.

To be honest, he was afraid, too. He didn't know what it was to want someone like this; he didn't know what it was to have someone want him like this. Somewhere (maybe one of those stupid fighting groups he'd joined on facebook) he'd read that swordplay was like foreplay, and that thought popped into his mind now.

"Afraid of what?"

"Losing," he said, letting his lips quirk into a smile. Better to diffuse the situation with humor than give into the tingling call of his body to draw her into his arms and hold her there.

To his surprise, Rey smirked. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because I can do this."

And with that, the fight began. Catching him off-guard, she pressed forward in a thundering offense, swinging her sword with wild, untrained abandoned. There was something intuitive about the way she moved her body, how she fought to counter his every defensive move.

Damn. If he'd thought she was sexy before just holding that sword, it was nothing compared to now, when she was actually swinging the thing.

"How did you—"

"No swords in foster care," she huffed, raising the sword above her head and going for a strike, which he barely managed to block, "but I did have to learn how to defend myself."

Like a dance, they moved across the now-empty training room floor. Crackling energy—something like anger, something like exhilaration, something like danger, something like what he imagined sex would be like—drove them in near-perfect synchronization. Move for move. Breath for breath. Heartbeat for heartbeat.

"You had a hard life, didn't you?" he asked, before he could help himself. She grunted and pushed away from him with the hilt of her sword, staggering back and up onto a nearby bench to gain the high ground.

"I didn't have sword fighting training, so I had a hard life?"

"No, you had a hard life because you didn't have sword fighting training and are somehow, almost kicking my ass." He swallowed, trying to maintain his concentration while his heart tried to fly to her. "No one should be that good out of necessity."

For a brief, staggering moment, Rey's movements hitched. Ben didn't allow himself the pleasure of taking advantage of that fact, instead retreating a few steps so she would be forced to follow him away from the higher ground.

But she recovered gracefully, even if her movements were untrained, and her voice lightened.

She was having fun, he realized. And, with a lightning heart, he realized that so was he. God, when had he ever felt this light, this happy before? Sparring and talking and quipping and wanting Rey…It was almost more than his heart knew how to handle.

"So, is it true that one time you almost killed a guy with one of these?" Rey asked, spinning just in time to catch his blade as it swung towards her knees.

"Are you trying to distract me?"

"Only if it's working."

Ben did his best to keep up with her fierce blows while the memory surfaced in his mind. The rumor mill had gotten ahold of that story and twisted it, just like they did with everything else. But this wasn't one of those rumors that he was ashamed of. "I was leaving a practice here and saw the guy trying to take upskirt shots in Upton Hall. And I didn't try to kill him. I only wanted him to bleed a little bit." Rey sniffed a laugh, punctuated and nearly drowned out by the clash of their swords against one another. Pressing her in place, he pulled himself in closer to her until the crossed blades nearly brushed his cheeks. She was so close. "What about you? I heard a rumor that you'd do anything for a price."

Rey shoved away, ducking to the side to draw him out. He pursued as her footfall dragged them towards the mats lined up against the farthest wall of the gym. "If you mean that I drove for lyft, delivered pizzas, worked as a for-hire courier, fixed rich asshole's cars, sold scrap metal and about a million other jobs to make some extra cash and save for school, then yeah. I did anything for a price."

Then, she spun on him, too suddenly to be an accident. Her voice was full of tension and confusion, and he only just managed to catch her sword with his own. This time, she neared him, and it was her face that loomed between their blades.

"Where did you hear that, anyway?"

This was his chance to win. Running his blade along hers, he used the shock of the reverberation to knock the sword out of her hand and into his, which he promptly turned on her. "I didn't. I just made it up. You were right. Distraction does work."

"Dammit."

They were in the room's farthest corner now, and the entire gym was quiet. They had the place to themselves, and though the training floor was vast, Ben suddenly felt cloistered in tight with her, pulled into her as if the walls were closing in behind them. Slowly, he set his weapons aside and stepped closer, closer, closer to her, until she was pressed between the wall and his body.

"You know," he said, his voice deep and uncertain. Well, his mind and his body were in agreement—I want this, I want her—but his inexperience made his voice shake. "We didn't discuss what would happen if I won, only what would happen if you won."

Rey's breast rose and fall in quick breaths against his own chest. Her eyes glanced down to his lips. All of his blood rushed southward.

"And what do you want?" she asked.

"This."

Before he could think better of it and before he could let fear talk him out of it, he raised his gloved hands to either of her cheeks and crashed his lips into hers. For a brief, torturous moment, she froze, and he readied himself to pull away. But just as he made the attempt, she reached for him, dragging his lips back to her own and hungrily capturing him once again.

She tasted like sweat and caramel and hope, and for the first time, he let himself give in to hope. This was better than the fight they'd just gone through. That had been a synchronicity of competition, of defense and attack. A back and forth where they could never agree on the outcome.

This time, their bodies moved for each other rather than against. And Ben drank in her every moan and breath and inch of bare skin he could get his lips on.

Finally, he stepped away, afraid that if he didn't, he was never going to learn how to stop kissing her. But he didn't fully pull away. Instead, he tipped his forehead against hers, his heavy breath matching her own. "Will you tell me something that's true? No more rumors or lies or distractions. Just the truth."

"The truth…" Her voice was small, distant. He couldn't quite understand why. All he understood was her tight grip against his hips. "The truth is that I really like kissing you."

His heart hitched. He took a step back. He'd gone to such extremes to keep anyone from liking him; the fact that this someone did touched him in a part of his soul he thought he'd locked in a drawer a long time ago. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really." God, she was sunshine and light and beauty and she'd chosen him. He would never understand why, but all he knew was he was glad. So, so glad. She turned that million-watt smile on him, raising a challenging eyebrow that made him want to kiss her all over again. "But you know, I could have beaten you. You didn't win in a fair fight."

Ben smirked. "Best two out of three? Same wager?"

"You're on."

Rey didn't regret her decision not to kiss Ben at the party. It wouldn't have been right, with him so drunk and her so conflicted and everything the way it was. Hell, if she'd been thinking straight and not completely intoxicated by the high of fighting with him, she probably wouldn't have agreed to the kiss they'd shared in the gym.

But once his lips had fallen upon hers, there was no going back. He lit a spark inside her, something real and burning, and it drove every one of her actions.

No, she might not have chosen to kiss him this morning, but now that she'd started, Rey did not ever want to stop.

Which was how she ended up getting caught straddling Ben's lap on the family's porch swing by his parents.

"Son, you have a bedroom. The least you could do for the poor girl is invite her inside. She'll catch her death out here."

Like a bolt of lightning splitting a too-tall tree, the voice of Leia Organa-Solo split the two fo them apart, their bodies smashing against opposite sides of the swing and leaving a generous empty space between them. In the back doorway of the house (where Rey and Ben had been heading until they'd been distracted by all the kissing), Leia and Han stood, their arms crossed. Leia, for her part, looked thoroughly amused, while Han was trying desperately to pretend he hadn't just seen what he'd seen

"Oh! I'm…" Rey ran a hand over her lips and the other through her hair, convinced she looked as if she'd been kissing all day which, of course, she had been. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Leia smirked again, her dry voice carrying across the early evening air. "No need to apologize. Not to us. The boys have walked into their fair share of me and my husband making out like teenagers."

"This is the worst moment of my life," Ben muttered.

"How's that car of yours doing, kiddo?" Han asked, his voice pitching up, uncomfortably trying to change the subject, a conversational turn Rey happily accepted.

"Great, sir," she squeaked. "Thank you."

"Well, if she gives you any problems, you just let me know."

"You're going to join us for dinner, aren't you?" Leia asked, beginning to follow her husband into the house.

"Nope," Ben said, jumping up from the porch. "We're going out."

"We could stay—"

"C'mon."

Considering that this was the single most embarrassing moment of Rey's entire life, she gratefully took Ben's hand when he offered it. But they should have known Leia wasn't going to let them go so easily. They hadn't even made it two steps away from the house when she called to them.

"Oh, Rey. You left something here the other day when you came to pick Ben up."

"I did?"

Ben shot his mother a warning look. "No, she didn't, mom."

"No, I'm sure she did." Leia played dumb and waved Rey inside. "Just come on. Come back in my office, I'm sure I put it in my drawer."

With every step she took deeper and deeper into the house, Rey became sure of two things: one, she hadn't left anything in this place; and two: she did not want to get on Leia Organa-Solo's bad side.

"So," the woman asked, settling in behind the desk in her office. The intimidating space made Rey feel small, but Leia's kind, warm eyes softened the chill in the air. "You're serious about my son."

"I like him, yes," Rey said, diplomatically.

"He's never brought a girl home before, and certainly not like this. You have all your shots? Been housebroken?"

Anyone else might have been offended, but Rey knew that Leia wasn't picking on her. She was, in her own way, welcoming her to the family. Leia only seemed to turn her humor on people she rather liked.

Equal parts guilt and delight filled Rey's chest. She always wanted a mother like Leia; she just wished she didn't have to betray the woman's son to get her.

"I think so."

"He's a good kid, my son. But a little lost. A little trapped in his own darkness. But you might just remind him how good it feels in the sunshine, you know? Be careful with him." Leia's eyes turned pleading, vulnerable. A rare look for her. "Please."

"I will."

"Good." The woman's knowing smile returned, and so did the glint in her eyes. "Because if you don't, I have the entire campus police on speed-dial and they work for me."

When Rey resurfaced from the house, her mind was a sharp tangle of knots that she wasn't sure she could untangle. Yes, she liked Ben. Yes, she was attracted to Ben. When she felt more alive and more real and less like a no one than she ever had before. But if his family was going to accept her, if he was feeling these things too…Maybe she'd gotten in too deep.

"Rey. Is everything alright?" Ben asked, waving to her from the porch swing, where he'd been impatiently waiting. Concern colored his gaze, and Rey ignored his summons, opting instead to start a frantic pacing.

"You have a wonderful family, you know. They all love you very much."

"Don't say that."

"But it's true. Do you know what I would give for a family like that?"

"They expect too much of me. I could never live up to—"

"Ben." She grabbed his hands up in hers, and poured all of the feeling she couldn't express verbally into the way she clutched him. He needed to know that he meant something. "You've never disappointed me. You won't disappoint them either. You can only fail them if you don't try."

He blinked down at her hands, as if he couldn't believe they were really touching. "I haven't disappointed you?"

"Not once," came her easy reply.

"Well." His lips found her knuckles. "I can't say the same."

Her heart dropped. "Really?"

"Yes, really." Face breaking out into an unabashed smile, he brought her back into his lap once more. "Because you're not kissing me right now. I find that very disappointing."

And as her lips met his, she knew that this was selfish. She knew that she should leave. She knew she should have never kissed him in the first place, knowing that she could break his heart at any minute.

But damn…She couldn't let this feeling go. She couldn't let Ben Solo go.

Kisses and feelings! Let me know what you think in a review or come and hang out with me on twitter where my username is jrstarcatcher . I'd love to chat with you all!